Tag Archives: conference

This looks like a great conference – to be held on Thursday, April 23rd, 2015. From the description:

An event for the whole organization, Spark brings together leaders from across the business to explore how they can work together to create lasting and total change. Talks and workshops offer inspiring examples and practical advice on taking action and overcoming obstacles. – See more at: http://2015.sparkthechange.ca/what-is-spark-2/#sthash.WI3bDFBA.dpuf

I have now just returned from Day 1 of the Scrum Gathering in Seattle. This is my first Scrum Gathering and it is turning out to be great!

Participants at the Scrum Gathering in Seattle

This is what I did throughout the day and some take-aways and learnings that I have gathered:

The Business Case for Agile: What Every Executive Needs to Know with speaker John Rudd
– there are now fewer constraints, with more variables in our world
– example of horse races, move bets to the horses in front
– use examples of failures in your organization to encourage the change
– benefits and ROI model
– waterfall: 15%
– agile: 30%
– agile with reduced scope: 50%
– People that I met in the session:
– Bill Rosner from Capital Group who is on a Scrum team in California
– James Kauffman who is the ScrumMaster near Seattle

Do We Have a Good Coach or a Bad Coach? with speaker Alan Atlas
– all about learning: good or bad
– results for a coach: direct (eg. launching a Scrum team), indirect (eg. less bugs produced)
– the SKERT framework: Skills, Knowledge, Environment, Results, Type of coach
– get feedback on coach throughout the year

the SKERT framework by Alan Atlas

30 Minute Chat with Alan Atlas
The Scrum Alliance set up this great thing: Scrum To Go. A participant can sign up for a private session with an experience Scrum coach, I believe that all of them were Certified Scrum Coaches (CSC). So I signed up to speak with Alan Atlas. He was very kind and knowledgeable. I asked him about becoming a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and many questions about helping teams to use Agile and Scrum. He offered three things to help when team members are not buying-in or becoming empowered on the Scrum team. (1) Team members to convince themselves of its usefulness and validity. (2) Peer pressure from other team members to become active participants. (3) Cheap coaching tricks such as putting those against Scrum in charge (you are now the ScrumMaster) or getting those team members to research something and share it with the team. He said that we don’t like to do bad work, so they will try to get the task done.

Scrum To Go: coaching sessions

Met Other Great People
Talked with Roger Brown (a CST) about the Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) process and how it has evolved. I also asked him about co-training with him for me to become a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). I also met Vernon Stinebaker (a CST) who lives in China and was trained by Mishkin Berteig, my colleague, many years back. I had the honour of meeting Lyssa Adkins (a CST) in person for the first time. I spoke with Lyssa, emailed back and forth, and I was part of her Agile Coaching Circle which took place over conference calls and emails. She is a wonderful person who is extremely motivated to work with coaches who, in her words, are the change catalysts in organizations. She introduced me to Carlton Nettleton (a CST) who I spoke with about co-training with him to become a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST).

Overall it was a great day. I look forward to learning more and meeting more great people. My take away for the day: Scrum people just like helping!

Warm regards,
Paul Heidema

Try out our Virtual Scrum Coach with the Scrum Team Assessment tool - just $500 for a team to get targeted advice and great how-to information

Now I am in Vancouver only one step away from Seattle, which is the location for the Scrum Gathering. I will go tonight to the hotel and register. I am excited to see the layout and look into the sessions.

I just read that the 3rd day of this 3 day conference has many sessions called “un-conference” open sessions. I like that this is a creative way to hold sessions which are normally setup with a speaker and a bunch of learners.

I hope that we will experience what we train. An environment where individuals interact to learn things, instead of a bunch people that have cups needed to filled up by an expert.

More to come!

Warm regards,
Paul Heidema

Try out our Virtual Scrum Coach with the Scrum Team Assessment tool - just $500 for a team to get targeted advice and great how-to information

I, Paul Heidema, am currently waiting at the Toronto airport for my flight to Vancouver and then to Seattle where I will be attending the Scrum Gathering. This will be my first Scrum Gathering, so I am excited, curious and a little nervous. What will it be like? Will I enjoy myself? What talks should I attend? Will I feel lonely? What is expected of me? These are just a few questions that I have rolling around in my mind.

Usually when I attend a conference, Agile or not I am with others that are familiar with the movement of the event. Not this time. However, my wife Laila is coming for the trip which makes it that much more enjoyable even though she is not attending the conference.

I hope to meet many trainers, consultants, people new to Scrum and all kinds of unique and wonderful people.

I am also in the process of applying to become a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). I hope to meet other CSTs and learn from there experience.

I will post more throughout the event.

Warm regards,
Paul Heidema

Try out our Virtual Scrum Coach with the Scrum Team Assessment tool - just $500 for a team to get targeted advice and great how-to information

Berteig Consulting is a silver sponsor for the 2009 Toronto leg of the Agile Tour conference. The date for Toronto is October 20th. You can find more information at the Toronto Agile Community web site – http://www.torontoagilecommunity.org/.

Try out our Virtual Scrum Coach with the Scrum Team Assessment tool - just $500 for a team to get targeted advice and great how-to information

The first day of the Agile 2008 Conference was fabulous! I’m working with five other great people including my wife, Melanie, my father, Garry, and three good friends: Paul, Travis and Laila. We have set up a beautiful booth designed by my brother, Alexei Berteig. Working at the booth has been a tiring yet exhilarating experience. Before the conference we received Boothmanship Training from The Portables. The people at The Portables have been excellent and I highly recommend them to anyone embarking on a booth display at a conference.

Today I delivered the first of my two presentations at the conference. The thirty minute experience report: “Extremely Short Iterations as a Catalyst for Effective Prioritization of Work” was well received. There were about 25 people in attendance and despite the short time for questions, there were some good ones. I enjoyed delivering the presentation and it was filmed for later publication on InfoQ. I also received highly positive feedback after the talk. On Thursday, I am giving a much more substantial presentation titled “Meta-Agile: Using Agile Methods to Deliver Agile Training“. This will be a three hour workshop in two parts: a 90 minute presentation, and then a 90 minute participatory patterns workshop. If you are a trainer or coach, I highly recommend attending this one!

I also ran into many friends… too many to list, in fact. It is surprising to me to see how many people I know in this community. There are over 1500 people at this agile conference, and I can’t walk more than 20 steps without running into someone I know. One other really cool thing is that everyone is commenting on how much they like the notebooks that were included in the conference bag – highly popular. In fact, three people have commented that it was the only useful thing in the bag… which is actually a bit of an exaggeration since the conference program was also in the bag and I suspect that it might be just a wee bit more useful Nevertheless, the feedback has been great.

Come check us out at our booth if you are at the conference – it’s unmistakable – strong red backdrop with the Berteig Consulting logo across the top. We also have a great raffle so be sure to drop off your raffle entry which is found in your notebook pocket.

Try out our Virtual Scrum Coach with the Scrum Team Assessment tool - just $500 for a team to get targeted advice and great how-to information

Berteig Consulting is a Silver Sponsor for Agile 2008.Â Hopefully our logo will show up on their home page sometime soon :-)Â We also have several proposals for sessions in and we are planning some really fantastic stuff for the conference.Â Make sure you attend if at all possible!

Try out our Virtual Scrum Coach with the Scrum Team Assessment tool - just $500 for a team to get targeted advice and great how-to information